Auteurship and the Avant-Garde
Auteur = author
- Suggests that great film directors are artists in their own right on a par with great novelists
- Films made by a true auteur display thematic consistency and artistic development through time
(Hitchcock, Tarantino, Guy Ritchie, Kubrick etc)
- Developed in response to Hollywood cinema and the criticism that American films are anonymous products of the studio system and the culture industry
- Truffaut - 'A certain tendency in French cinema' (1945) - attacks French tradition in which director is seen as simply adding images to a pre-existing literary scenario
"Coherent view of the discourses fundamental to it's understanding and 'art'" - Paul Wells
- Auteur theory (longer, complicated Q)
- Animation on one hand echoes and imitates large scale film production processes
- On the other hand, offers possibility for a film maker to operate almost entirely alone
- Arguably the most Auterist of film practices
- Even most collaborative requires cohesive intervention
- But few animators lauded as auteurs in relation to feature length animation
- Subsumed within a corporative identity (e.g Disney)
- Persistent view that animation is largely for a childrens' audience, which is not interested in issues of authorship
(Tim Burton, Glen Keane, Beelevilee(?))
Disney
- Key figure in creation of art, commerce and industry of animation
- Seen as the epitome of American dream, but also idealogically unsound and politically incorrect
- Useddd to be involved with drawing and animating (Walt Disney)
- With the arrival of Mickey Mouse, he withdrew from the animation itself to organise
- Idea of overall ownership + [???] but it is at the expense of the recognition of actual animators
Equal notion of absenting and demoting the original author e.g
Winnie the pooh/A.A Milne - known better for Disney ---- AMERICANISED
Ray Harryhausen
- Arguably maker of 'B' movies but elevated via his use of effects which create a distinctive and signature cinematic style
- Question of how his effects were achieved and also what would be lost without them - virtually all narrative and symbolic content
- Located within the parameters of cinematic filmmaking
- Responsible for character development, formation of story + narrative which would allow characters to come into being
- Draw, sculpt, bring to life w/stop-mo
Avant-garde - 'implies that progress is always the result of a rebellion against'
